If a woodchuck could ride a bike, just how much power would it take for that woodchuck to be mediocre as a cat 3 bike racer?

16 August 2010

August 15, Suisun Harbor Criterium

CTL: 133
TSB: 0

To make for yesterday's total lack of using my fitness, I keep telling myself to spend as much time as possible in the wind, no point in building up fitness all the time and not use it during a race.

The course is a long rectangle, reversed in direction from previous years - a traffic control device blocked one lane on the old finish line, and it's convenient to use the same block to store the stage for the finish line because the block is vacant, just a different street. So instead of being like racing on the velodrome, it's more like the reverse polish notation version.

The winds that abandoned Dunnigan come back to Suisun City, it feels like a crosswind or headwind in every direction on the course.

Told myself I wasn't going to attack from the gun so I slot behind the guys who do surge first, and when they soft pedal after half a lap, I figured that was a long enough wait so I put in a tiny acceleration there. This is enough to get me off the front for two laps solo (each lap only takes about one minute so not as impressive as it sounds). On the third lap I take a look back and see someone gaining and ease up and then dig deep to grab on when Andreas from Bicycle Planet passes.

For the next fourteen or so laps Andreas takes the majority of the pulls. We get out to fifteen seconds maximum but I can see some of the teams in the race are organizing a chase. At one point a rider in black kit joins us, then drops out. Then a rider with a teammate in the pack joins us when the lead drops to ten seconds. It goes back up for a little while with fresh legs but inexorably the pack brought us back.

Glad I tried, a couple of times I considered dropping off the break but it just felt hard, wasn't really that hard, the fifteen minutes off the front was just at threshold. Rest of the race sat in and tried a few surges but some people just wanted a pack sprint and we were all together on the bell lap. Started from way too far back and moved from tenth in the final corner to fifth.